Layout tips

I had a realization today. My map sucks. I'm a fair way a long and I don't want to start over, nor do I have inspiration for any other map.

I drew up a quick sketch of my map so far. It's a payload.

Any ideas how I can make this an actual decent map?

The dark blue is the track, the little cross-beams are the capture points.

Light grey are buildings, light red are red spawns, light blue are blue spawns, brown is cliffs (Thats why the map is called chasm) the tunnels through the brown are mine shafts...oh, and the big grey blob at the top is a dam.
And the light blue is water(kinda not there, dried up, but there's some puddles)

Keep in mind a lot of those open areas will be filled with cliffs/cuttings/tunnels etc

I don't see any red...?
If it is possible, I think you should have the payload blow up the dam, filling up the dried up river.
Maybe add some cover from/alternate routes around Snipers, while still giving them some decent Sniping points.

You are going to have to forgive me.
I have partial color-blindness. (I can see colors, but some colors are hard to differentiate.)
I saw the "pinky" stuff and it looks gray.
The way you make the map sound, I can't imagine why you would think it sucked. It sounds like a great map.
(Maybe it is an artistic thing, some artists just can't except that their work is good unless someone else tells them it is.)
I can't wait until I can see some actual in-game screenshots.

Basically you need to break line of sight, add more corners to break gameplay monotony and cases of certain class OP/UP.

Most PL/CP maps are U or S shaped. For various reasons (namely optimisation, gameplay mechanics).

Let the player experience different scenario's, such as indoors, outdoors, underwater (reservedly), height. Having the PL pass through a building gives you the oppotunity to "wow" players both when they enter the building, and when they exit. Having everything outside limits the amount you can vary the scenario given the limited props and materials to use within a single environment.

Your sketch is basic and way too rough to fully comprehend your intentions, and i am sure you have a better idea of what you want to achieve than I ever could by studying your picture.

Excuse double post, but just kinda threw this together in 5-10 minutes.

You wanna get something with a rigid grid system so you can better estimate scale. Figure out where you'll have buildings, where you can shoot down from, and access from ground level. You'll know you have enough corners and cover, vertical combat, oppotunity to fight against and from advantagous ground. What positions will be SG friendly, sniper friendly, soldier friendly and pyro friendly, specifically.

You can also find reasons to channel the river through impassable areas (under/through a fence) and have it quietly disappear around the corner. Then in the next arena (separated by, say, tunnels) have a new body of water that comes from the same general direction, and and players will simply assume there's some bend in the river (perhaps even far away) they can't see.

In essence, the river meanders in and out of sight, but players are taking "shortcuts" under (tunnels) and over (track inclines) the hills that separate the river. I haven't made any maps from scratch before, but here's what I mean:
Sort of like how Dustbowl uses tunnels between the two halves of the map in the first two stages.

Good point: That's another benefit of having the water go "off map" for a while:

You can have it "come back" at a higher elevation in the next arena, and have tunnel sections sloped so that players can tell they're going "uphill" while avoiding sloped water. (As long as you can't see both levels of water from the same place.)

You can encourage players to assume the water is flowing visibly downhill and going over waterfalls and things simply in places they can't see it.

How would you make the transition of visible to invisible water? You could do man-made pipes but that doesn't really fit the theme. You could do an underground-river, but you could only do that so many times...

Why shouldn't pipes or man-made canals fit? At least from I understood from your concept, you have a dam there, so the area doesn't have the need of being all done by nature... additionally, much in TF2 is spytech hidden in obscure areas, so I wouldn't say that there is not way to fit pipes in our theme - because spy accessoires does not fit in a farm theme. It's all about making the player curious what this area's secret is about